


A Story to Tell

by bgoodg



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, Post Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bgoodg/pseuds/bgoodg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that's left, are the stores we tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Story to Tell

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction and not written for profit. The characters mentioned belong to their respective creators and owners. No defamation is implied.

"Once upon a time, way out in the black, there was a prince named Wash. He wasn't your regular type of prince; he didn't have a kingdom or a court or even a proper dragon, but he had a castle. A not so big but so very great castle that he could call home. And the castle had everything a castle should have: a king and a princess, an alchemist and some fair maidens," Kaylee says with a grin.

"Daddy wasn't a prince," the little child states. For being barely big enough to reach the table, her opinions are numerous and determined.

"He could have been," Kaylee states. She leans forward, hands on her knees and bops the child's nose with her finger. "And I'm sure you would have been his little princess."

***

"Sit very still," Simon warns her. The needle slices into the young girl's skin, making the child's nose scrunch up in pain and her eyes start to fill with tears, an occurrence that Simon has absolutely no ability to deal with.

"Ah come on doc, ain't you ever deal with kids back on the core?" Jayne growls from where he's laid out on the hospital bed. His head is immobilized, resulting from an accident with their latest shipment of black market dachshunds. The big man would be fine, but Simon wasn't above keeping the brace around his head for a little longer than medically necessary.

"I did a round in pediatrics," Simon admits; however, he hadn't been planning on making it his specialty for exactly the crying reason.

"It hurts." She frowns and tries to wiggle away. Her eyesight has been fading since the ship visited Woolong, an outlaying planet where blindness is common due to terraforming. The ship had only been in port for a couple of days but the young and the elderly were more susceptible to the disease.

"Hold on, just a little bit longer. Please?" Simon questions when the girl starts to fidget.

"Aw hell."

"Language!" Simon yells.

"Aw, heck," Jayne amends. "I hope for Kaylee's sake your actual bedside manner is a lot better than your doctorly one."

"How about I tell you a story?" Simon offers, only because he doesn't have any candy to bribe her with instead.

"What kind of story?"

"A good one," Simon assures her, racking his brain for stories River liked to hear.

"I got a story," Jayne butts in.

"Oh please no." Simon's been subject to Jayne's stories before. "Let's not traumatize the child."

"Ain't nothin' like that. I got a story about Wash."

Simon feels a kick to the pit of his stomach.

"I want to hear," she states, still clutching her stuffed animal but not threatening to cry anymore.

Jayne pulls himself up so that his feet dangle over the edge and he can look the child in the face. The two bandages that act as padding for the neck brace stick out and make him resemble Frankenstein's monster. Simon's seen Jayne early in the morning and the description is not far off.

Jayne starts, "This was back in the old days, before we had the preacher."

Another kick to the ribs.

"Or the good doctor and his crazy sister," Jayne continues. "I had just come on the ship, still not quite sure of my place among the crew. So I took to hanging out in the cockpit. Seemed to me, Wash was the one least likely to turn and gut me."

"Over Kaylee?" Simon questions.

"Me and her had a misunderstanding early in our acquaintanceship. Ended up with me almost losing my manparts by wrench so I kept a wide berth from her."

Simon has to give Jayne credit for not manhandling his mentioned manparts. He'd also have to tease Kaylee to tell him that particular tale.

"This one day, we're getting ready to land at Persephone to go badger, well Badger, but it was that fancy social season so the space port was crowded as all hell."

"Language," Simon reminds.

Jayne makes a face at Simon. "It was so crowded I couldn't cuss the cat out without getting fur in my mouth. Is that better?"

"Only hardly," Simon remarks.

"As I was sayin', it was crowded. So was the cockpit, as we'd all decided to come up front and watch Wash try to land Serenity without getting us squished. At this port, there's this giant red and green light. Red for stop, green for go and there's this white line you're suppose to stop at, and it very particularly tells you to stop before the white line." Jayne uses his hands to demonstrate the line and where Serenity is suppose to be. "Well Wash and all his backseat drivers are all telling him to make sure he stops before the white line, it has to be before otherwise the feds have cause to come search the ship. And since we were carrying all manner of illegal equipment that wouldn't have done us no good. So finally, it's Wash's turn, and what does that man do?" Jayne starts chuckling, shaking his head and making the bandages on his side wag like ears. "He stops the ship a good twenty feet behind the line. For a couple of seconds no one says anything, because technically he is behind the line but it sure as hell ain't where he should be. And finally it's Zoe, honest to goodness Zoe, who starts bursting out laughing. Pretty soon the whole cockpit is laughing and Wash is just sitting there in the pilot's seat with a big ole grin on his face. Shut us up for at least a week."

She joins Jayne in laughing, not even wincing when Simon has to extract the needle.

"There we go." He quickly puts a bit of gauze and pressure on the site. "We'll have you fixed in no time." Simon smiles and marvels at her quick turnaround of emotions, and that it was Jayne of all people, who put that smile on her face.

***

"Ariel is very gorgeous," Inara assures her. "One of the finest core planets."

"Momma said she'd take me to a park. With trees for me to climb and everything."

"I'm sure it'll be delightful." Inara smiles over her teacup.

"Do you think my daddy was a good climber?" she questions.

The teacup is set down gently. "I bet he was excellent."

The girl nods and goes back to the dinosaurs spread across the floor of Inara's shuttle.

"He told me a story once, about himself when he was a little older than you. Would you like to hear it?"

"Okay," she states, having the stegosaurus attack the raptor.

"Your daddy was born on a planet where he couldn't see the stars, so polluted was the sky. So all his life, he only heard about what was beyond the thin gray haze that substituted. He knew they were stars out there though. So one day your daddy decides that the best way to reach those stars is to climb the highest building in his town. That was obviously very silly and you shouldn't try anything like that," Inara rushes to warn. They don't need a repeat of the ventilator incident. "But for seven year old Wash, he thought it was a mighty fine plan."

"What happened?"

"Well, the highest building in town was the Mayor's house which only happened to be two stories, so your daddy got onto the roof and decided to jump up and down, to see if that made any difference."

"Silly daddy."

"Very silly," Inara agrees. "Eventually he jumped so hard and so much, that the poor thin roof just collapsed. Luckily, his fall was cushioned by a large stack of money. Turns out, the mayor had been withholding funds from the city for the past twenty-two years. If your daddy hadn't been jumping for the stars, the town never would have found out."

"Did daddy keep the money?" she asks, because she has lived her whole life on a ship full of smugglers.

"I don't think so," Inara says, shaking her head and smiling.

***

"The evil Alliance had them all in his grasp, but then, the great superhero Jetwash, flew in to save everyone. Which was a good thing because Captain Tightpants was in way over his head," River states.

"Here you two are." Mal's boots clomp into the kitchen, inching himself around the storage bins so that he can see where River and the girl have wedged themselves in. "I've been looking all over for you two."

"Liar," River states. "You were sleeping and forgot it was your turn to watch her."

"Naughty," the girl draws out, pleased that for once it's not her getting the criticism.

"I wasn't exactly oversleeping as much as recuperating from getting shot," Mal defends.

"Again." Both girls chime in.

It's a little freaky when they do that.

"My sleeping habits ignored, your momma wants you Lil Miss, best be running along."

The child sighs but slips out of their hiding spot and tramples through the kitchen.

"Hey, you know the rules," Mal yells after her. "No running on the ship. Unless we're getting shot at. Or there's a fire. Or if we're racing."

River doesn't say anything but Mal can feel her smile from the floor.

"You be quiet, seems like I had to run a lot because of you," Mal states. "How'd you keep her still anyways? Seems like every time I have to watch her she's a bundle of jackalopes and spark plugs."

"She asked about her dad," River explains, "so I told her."

An awkward silence wedges its way into the kitchen. The same awkward silence that seems to fall whenever the departed are mentioned.

"We're all just stories in the end," River remarks, unfolding her legs to stand up.

"I reckon we are," Mal states.

"Also," River adds while passing Mal and heading to the cockpit, "I bribed her with sweets."

***

"This town, tiny, tiny little town on some backwood planet, decided that their primary form of entertainment would be juggled geese. Live baby geese!" the wave screen shakes, as whoever was holding the camera must have been laughing too hard to keep it straight. "I was dating this local girl at the time. Beautiful girl with long brunette hair," Wash looks right of the screen and adds, "Of course nothing compared to the lady I would one day marry."

"Keep talking husband," Zoe says off camera.

"But her family decided that for me to keep seeing her, I had to participate in the contest that year, otherwise I wouldn't be a man. Who knew my manhood rested on my ability to juggle baby geese?"

"What you doing baby girl?" Her mom's boots start down the ladder, landing in a jump at the bottom.

She turns off the vid screen, stashing it under a pile of blankets Kaylee and Inara knit for her.

"Nothing," she states.

Zoe sits down next to her, wrapping her arms around her girl and saying, "You don't have to hide that from me."

"I know," she whines. "But when I ask about him, it makes you sad that he's not with us."

Zoe tries to smile but the corner of her lips barely moves. "The only thing that would make me sad is if you ever stopped asking."

***

People always ask about her dad. They offer their condolences when she says he died battling the Alliance. But the only thing she really wants, is for people to say "tell me about him." She's got plenty of stories.


End file.
